Homicide Rewatch: The Hat

 

Teleplay by Anya Epstein ; story by Tom Fontana & Henry Bromell

Directed by Peter Medak

 

Homicide was far from the first drama to elicit great dramatic performances from actors known mostly for comic roles particularly in guest star turns. David E. Kelley had shown a turn for that when he was the head writer for L.A. Law and had already demonstrated that ability on the first two seasons of Chicago Hope. On The X-Files Vince Gilligan had already shown that ability with Tony Shalhoub in one episode and during the Emmy season for this year Peter Boyle would win his only Emmy for 'Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose' in a performance that can only be described as tragi-comedy.  ER was beginning to move into this direction even in its second season and very quickly would turn it into an art form and even at this stretch in its run Law & Order had gotten superb dramatic turns from stand-up comics Alan King, Robert Klein and Larry Miller.

Homicide had not quite been willing to go that far in its guest cast since Robin Williams's incredible turn in 'Bop Gun'. But starting in Season 4, it began a pattern of casting comic actors and actresses, almost always against type in dramatic guest turns anywhere between twice and three times a season. The first clear example of this comes in The Hat, which features a performer who even in 1996 had more than earned the term 'comedy legend': Lily Tomlin. Tomlin had started her career on Laugh-In but aside from guest hosting Saturday Night Live a few times and   recurring stint on children's TV and an appearance in the HBO Emmy Winning film And The Band Played On she had spent most of the last twenty years exclusively in movies. Though no one could have known at the time this appearance was about to mark the second phase of Tomlin's career (see Hey, Isn't That…for the details) both in terms of where she'd work and the kind of performances she was capable of.

I suspect one of the reasons she was cast in this episode had less to do with her comic ability but her dramatic range. Tomlin was one of the most skilled comic actresses in her film work but Robert Altman in particular had made great use of her in dramatic roles from Nashville to Short Cuts. And in a role in which much of her performance is almost conversational monologues its obvious as to why you'd want someone like Tomlin who was already capable of that as a comic performer.

In an episode that is dealing with events that will affect Homicide's short and long-term future, that starts out celebratory and becomes increasingly grim as the action in the squad continues, the decision to treat the main plot of the episode as almost comic hijinks makes it seem like this is a light episode. One writer described it as 'a Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour road movie done Homicide style." Now I've never seen any of these films but I know of their existence so let me describe it: in the 1940s and 1950s, Hope, Crosby and Dorothy Lamour were cast in a series of Road to films that went to exotic destinations (Singapore, Bali, Morocco). It was usually a love triangle with comic routines and it involve long trips by plane, train, boat or automobile. Wacky hijinks ensued.

In 'The Hat' Kellerman and Lewis have received words that a suspect in the bludgeoning death of her husband, Rose Halligan has been picked up in Hazelton, Pennsylvania. Against the wishes of their sergeant Lewis and Kellerman travel to Pennsylvania to extradite their suspect. Meldrick wants make a stop at a tourist attraction more than closing the murder which pisses Kellerman off. Neither think Halligan is dangerous as she was a vocal teacher and has the appearance of a harmless grandmother. (Tomlin was 56 at the time of the episode but even then had the appearance of being matronly.)

By this point in Tomlin's career she was known for playing women who were either browbeaten by life or if they had any weapons it was their razor sharp wit. Dressed in a fur coat with a flowery hat, polite in her behavior Rose looks and acts completely harmless. She doesn't really say anything for the first act of the episode and its clear she barely talks during much of the ride back to Baltimore. Kellerman and Lewis have no more regard for her than the average suspect and given her appearance very likely take her less seriously. And to be perfectly fair for the lion's share of the episode neither does the viewer.

It is a tribute to both Tomlin and Epstein that even though by now we know anyone is capable of murder and that Rose almost certainly murdered her husband we spend much of the episode convinced that she is incapable of hurting the proverbial fly.  Tomlin in much of her later work would show women who were more dynamic and forceful behind their frail appearance and you could make an argument this is where it begins.

It's hard to know just how seriously Kellerman in particular is taking picking up his first fugitive. He is still the rookie in the squad after all and we get a sense of the boyish exterior when he's taking the opportunity to clear an open case and seems more interested in visiting a theme park in Harrisburg he went to as a child.  Lewis is the more serious one for once, but its clear his issues with Howard are still bubbling even now. He manages to keep Kellerman from changing course the first time but when they head back home he seems more interested in the kind of dialogue we see on Homicide. It's only then Rose pipes up, talking about her husband for the first time and how she got into a fight with him over one Sunday morning with a war between opera and golf. Classical plays over much of the episode instead of the usual pop music and its fitting given both Rose's profession and so much of the nature of the crime.

Lewis doesn't particularly want to hear Rose talk and he's not thrilled when Kellerman wants to go to the Magic Kingdom to see King Neptune and a thousand pound swordfish. When Kellerman and Rose overrule him he's annoyed and he has a right to be. The two very nearly let Rose get away the first time and the first time we see this episode we're completely flummoxed – and then hysterical – to see Rose waiting by the car.

It's in the next sequence that it slowly becomes clear what Rose has been wending her way towards in her speeches and when she delivers the monologue that we see what she's getting at. She has been talking to how she was planning to go to a singing lesson in Eldersburg and got lost. She pulls over and is looking for a road map, she searches the car inside and out as we all do, and it is there she finds the title object. It belonged to her best friend Gertie Claymore. She realizes the signs of what has been unfolded between her husband and her best friend all this time and with her blood boiling she drives to Gertie's house and sees it for herself. "I can forgive Arthur; I can forgive Gertie. The one person I can't forgive is myself." In essence she has confessed to the murder of her husband – and it is out of that sense of overconfidence that the detectives decide to commit a horrible lapse in judgment.

They pull over to get Rose a tuna melt because both of them feel sorrow for her. Lewis talks in bigger terms but Kellerman seems more guarded. We know that he and Annie are divorced but to this point we have no idea what the cause was. Kellerman is reluctant to share but at that moment things get notably worse. They've let Rose go to the bathroom, this time unguarded – and Rose takes the opportunity to slip out the back.

This mistake alone should have been enough to get Kellerman and Lewis transferred – as we saw during the Annabella Wilgus case (which will become horribly pertinent in this episode) Roger Gaffney's lapse in judgment led to being taken off the case and eventually transferred out of Homicide. But that pales in comparison to the consequences of their actions. By the time Lewis and Kellerman track Rose down at Gertie Claymore's residence and find her calmly sitting on the porch, humming classical music the worst has happened. She tells Mike she went back to return Gertie her hat and she did – but she killed her first.

All of this is the kind of thing that should have gotten them transferred and under the new leadership it should have. Somehow in the interim between the season premiere and the sniper killing Roger Gaffney has been promoted to lieutenant. How exactly this happened the viewer is left to ponder and frankly we can't wonder that much longer.

Russert encounters him after cleaning out her desk as captain and he is just as loathsome and sexist as he was before. He hated her when she was his boss; he sees no need to treat her with less condescension now. When Russert walks into the squad Giardello is leaving to talk to Bonfather.

Everyone assumes that Giardello is going to be promoted to captain – he was passed over for Russert last year and it makes a certain sense based on merit. The fact that Russert's promotion had nothing to do with merit should have been a red flag to the viewer and Giardello refuses to get his hopes up at least when his unit comes to celebrate him for what they assume is inevitable. Indeed everyone is more concerned about who will replace Giardello as shift commander, and its telling nobody particularly wants it. "I vote for anarchy," Frank says. They might prefer that.

And later that episode Bonfather does make the announcement – its Gaffney. The round of applause stops almost immediately and Pembleton and Bayliss are appalled. For the first time we see just how strong Frank's bond in particular is with Al: he really does think he should have been promoting and he doesn't know how he can go to work every day for a man who called him boy.

David Simon would later argue that the decision to promote Gaffney was unrealistic and went against what he saw happened while writing his book, something that was a factor in his decision to creating The Wire a few years later. (Giving that the majority of bosses were promoted not on merit but rather pure politics and that some of them were clearly bad leaders, it strikes me as somewhat petty.) But for the purposes of the show the decision makes a great deal of sense. For the first three seasons the bosses have seemed purely political animals with no respect for the detectives until Russert came along and muddied the equation. Now with Gaffney one level on the food chain, the show effectively has an antagonist that best represents all that is wrong with the bosses. This pattern is shown when Gaffney first addresses the unit: everyone ignores him and Gee has to shout in order to get them to quiet down. His address is mean-spirited and degrading and it's toothless: the detectives will spend the remainder of the series basically ignoring every one of the protocols Gaffney sets out and when they talk to him barely manage a modicum of respect required. And Al has even more  motivation to protect his detectives from the bosses then before: a man he utterly despises is now his boss and he will not let him have a moment of peace. Still the scene when Giardello walks out of the squad, goes to the video room and begins to pound the lockers first with a bat, then his fist, is as clear an expression of his rage as we ever see the reserved lieutenant ever do. It's one of  Kotto's best moments in the series.

And to put the cherry on the proverbial crap sundae Munch spends the episode preparing for the trial of Edward Krieg who is guilty of the murder of Susan Marech, a partner in a law firm he was embezzling from. He's looking for Brodie and his tape of the crime scene which should put the nail in his coffin. Except Brodie shows up and reveals that his tape shows that part of the evidence is broken.

To be clear this evidence is not the least bit exculpatory: we've heard a conversation between Danvers and Munch that proves that the tape is unnecessary to convict Krieg for the murder. It's tempting to argue that Munch's order of Brodie to destroy evidence might fall under the burden of being a bad cop but even Brodie acknowledges there's more than sufficient evidence to convict Krieg without it. Munch, however, counters that if this evidence is brought to light, Krieg's high-power attorneys will use it to call all the other evidence – which is rock solid – into question and Krieg will go free on a technicality.

Homicide, I should repeat, has a far more cynical approach to the criminal justice system than any procedural of the 1990s and with the exception of some cable ones during the 21^st century, a far more accurate one. This has been a subtext of the show considering that everything centers on getting a confession from the suspect that will lead them to plead  to a lesser charge. Danvers (who we see for the first time in Season 4) made that clear in his first appearance and the show hasn't backed away from it. If anything this is the first time that Homicide argues some of the principles stating in Simon's book about juries. I'll use the first one here: "To a jury, any doubt is reasonable." (This basic principle, I should add, would be proven throughout the 1990s and beyond in the work of David E. Kelley: we had seen in Picket Fences during the first half of Homicide's run and it would be emphasized even more strongly in The Practice which debuted during the second half.) When Munch argues jurors don't like cops this is far from an exaggeration and he knows this.

And he's absolutely right. Everything Munch says will happen when Brodie turns in the tape is right. He shows the recording of the verdict not so much to be cruel but to educate Brodie on the consequences of his actions.  Honesty is not the best policy in Homicide and Brodie in a sense never learns that.(Another reason his character never gelled on the show.)

At the end of the episode Lewis is convinced that he and Kellerman will lose their jobs for what happened. Because of the rules on TV they can't and it will be passed over. During this period Kellerman says something casual: Annie's name could be on the board. His wife had an affair on it and the moment he was told he wanted to kill her. He felt it in every part of his body but the urge faded. It's a brief moment at the end of the episode but combined with what we see in the rest of it in tells us something about Kellerman that we don't want to think of. He has poor impulse control and he lets his emotions rule the day. He was sympathetic to Rose and as a result of his behavior he let his guard down and another person is dead.

That's why I think the opera being sung throughout is telling.  The great romantic operas reveal how emotions can get the better of their heroes – usually men – and those urges lead them to commit horrible violent acts.  The fat lady has sung for Rose Halligan but for Kellerman's arc, the comedy is far from over.

NOTES FROM THE BOARD

 

Lily Tomlin was nominated for Best Guest Actress in a Drama Series for her work in this episode, the first performer to be nominated in this category for Homicide since Gwen Verdon in 1993. She lost to Amanda Plummer for The Outer Limits.

Hey, Isn't That…After Tomlin's turn in this episode she would take on her first series regular role in twenty years in Murphy Brown where she played the new producer of FYI, Kay Carter Shepley. She would play the role for the next two years. Her next major role of prominence, as prestige TV fans know, was Deborah Fiderer,  the new secretary for Jed Bartlet, which she began playing in Season 3 and would have a recurring role until the end of the series. She was then cast in the HBO drama 12 Miles of Bad Road in 2008 which filmed six episodes but was never shown for reasons that are unclear. She moved on to playing Roberta Simmons in Season 5 of Desperate Housewives and then moved to a solid dramatic role in the third season of Damages where she played Marilyn Tobin, the wife of a man who runs a Ponzi scheme. For this role she would receive another Emmy nomination for Best Guest Actress in a Drama. She was cast in the role of Reba MacIntire's mother in the ABC comedy Malibu Country and after it was canceled after one season she landed the role of Frankie Bergstein in Grace & Frankie, Netflix's longest running comedy series to date which earned her four consecutive Emmy nominations for Best Lead Actress in a Comedy. She didn't win (curse you Julia Louis-Dreyfus). Still its not like Tomlin has a shortage of Emmys:  she won three for writing during the 1970s for her own comedy specials and one for writing a Paul Simon Special.

'Detective Munch': In addition to the true start of the Munch/Brodie relationship (the only plus of Brodie's presence on the series) there's a wonderful moment when while searching for the tape in question Munch finds what is definitely an adult video and watches it with interest even as Howard squirms as eventually leaves the room.

Lewis' ploy of interesting Kellerman as Michelle (because the local cops will only release Rose to a female officer) is taken from an incident in Simon's book.

The consequences of Kellerman's lapse in judgement will come back to haunt him when the FBI comes to investigate him in Season 5 when Lewis is questioned on this directly.

We will learn the reason for Gaffney's promotion in the fifth season episode Blood Wedding.

This episode is Anya Epstein's first teleplay for Homicide as staff writer, a position she will hold until Season 7 and she will become an executive producer in 1997. It was the start of a career of one of the most prominent female writers/producers in TV today. She was responsible for producers short lived series such as Commander-In-Chief, Tell Me You Love Me and the third and final season of In Treatment. She was one of the head writers and show runners of The Affair from Season 2 to Season 4 and would also work with David Simon on The Deuce. Her last major project was the HBO limited series I Know This Much Is True.